Future Exhibitions and Installations

The Getty Center

The great painter of modern Paris Édouard Manet famously shocked contemporary audiences with his provocative pictures. The first exhibition ever to explore the last years of his short life, Manet and Modern Beauty highlights a less familiar and more intimate side of this celebrated artist’s work. Stylish portraits, luscious still lifes, delicate pastels and watercolors, vivid café and garden scenes convey Manet’s elegant social world and reveal his growing fascination with fashion, flowers, and the contemporary trappings of femininity.

True Grit: American Prints and Photographs from 1900 to 1950

October 15, 2019–January 19, 2020

With works drawn from local museums, a private collection, and the Getty’s own collection, True Grit provides two vibrant surveys: one of early twentieth-century American printmaking and the other a complementary photography display. Compelling depictions of the time convey a broad view of American culture that includes dance halls and boxing rings, skyscrapers and subways, parks and tenement apartments. Using innovative techniques, these American artists captured the gritty world around them and came to terms with modern life.

Peasants in Pastel: Millet and the Pastel Revival

October 29, 2019–May 10, 2020

Long associated with aristocratic portraiture, pastel had fallen out of fashion by the mid-nineteenth century, when Jean-François Millet turned the powdery medium to a quite different purpose: scenes of contemporary peasant life. This installation presents a selection of pastels by Millet and his followers, addressing the relationship between rural labor and urban collecting and encouraging visitors to consider how an artist’s chosen medium affects our understanding of his or her subject matter.

Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art

November 19, 2019–February 16, 2020

Early medieval legends reported that one of the three kings who paid homage to the newborn Christ Child in Bethlehem was from Africa. But it would be nearly one thousand years before artists began representing Balthazar, the youngest of the magi, as a black African. This exhibition explores the juxtaposition of a seemingly positive image with the difficult histories of Afro-European contactin particular the brutal African slave tradewhich informed European artists’ interest in representing race.

Käthe Kollwitz: Prints, Process, Politics

December 3, 2019–March 29, 2020

Käthe Kollwitz, one of the foremost graphic artists of the 20th century, is celebrated for her affecting portrayals of the hardships of war, poverty, and injustice and for her technical virtuosity. A selection of works on paper from the Dr. Richard A. Simms Collection at the Getty Research Institute—including rare preparatory drawings, working proofs, and trial prints—sheds light on Kollwitz's creative process and reveals the depth of her social and political engagement.

Unseen: 35 Years of Collecting Photographs

December 17, 2019–March 8, 2020

Commemorating the 35th anniversary of the Museum’s collection of photographs, this exhibition reveals the breadth and depth of the Getty’s acquisitions through an array of its hidden treasures, none of which have been exhibited at the Getty before. Spanning the history of the medium from its early years to the present day, Unseen highlights visual associations between photographs from different times and places to encourage fresh discoveries and underscore a sense of continuity and change within the history of the medium.

In Focus: Platinum and Palladium Photographs

January 21–May 31, 2020

Revered for its velvety matte surface and neutral palette, the platinum process, introduced in 1873, helped establish photography as a fine art. The process was championed by prominent photographers until platinum was embargoed during World War I, but it attracted renewed interest during the mid-twentieth century from a relatively small but dedicated community of practitioners. This exhibition draws from the Getty Museum’s collection to showcase some of the most striking prints made with platinum and the closely related palladium processes.

Artists on the Move: Journeys and Drawings

February 11–May 3, 2020

Why did artists leave their homes behind? How did they use the medium of drawing to record their journeys? And how did mobility impact their draftsmanship? This exhibition, featuring works by Canaletto, Gauguin, Rubens, and Van Gogh, explores such questions through a selection of European drawings from the Museum’s permanent collection, spanning from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries.

Michelangelo: Mind of the Master

February 25–June 7, 2020

Michelangelo (14751564) was one of the most creative and influential artists in the history of Western art. This exhibition explores the full range of his work as a painter, sculptor, and architect through more than two dozen of his extraordinary drawings, including designs for celebrated projects such as the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the Medici Chapel tombs, and The Last Judgment. These studies and sketches enable us to witness Michelangelo at work, and to experience firsthand his boundless creativity and his pioneering representation of the human form.

Painted Prophecy: The Hebrew Bible through Christian Eyes

March 10–May 31, 2020

Images drawn from the Hebrew Bible (known to Christians as the “Old Testament”) were among the most popular subjects for Christian illuminated manuscripts in the Middle Ages. This exhibition brings manuscripts that explore the medieval Christian understanding of Hebrew scripture into dialogue with the Rothschild Pentateuch, a masterpiece of the Jewish manuscript tradition. Together, these objects from different religious traditions demonstrate how the Hebrew Bible was a living document, its contents subject to interpretation dependent on time and place.

Dora Maar

April 21–July 26, 2020

Enigmatic and endlessly fascinating, Dora Maar (French, 19071997) generated iconic surrealist photographs, engaged with political organizations, and established a commercial studio in Parisall before the age of thirty. Despite these achievements, her work remains overshadowed by her relationship with Pablo Picasso. This exhibition examines Maar in her own right, tracing her career from assignments and street photographs made in the early 1930soften the foundation for her surrealist photomontagesto postwar paintings. It also considers the rich historical context from which Maar emerged.

Artists as Collectors

June 2–August 16, 2020

Artists were the earliest and greatest collectors of drawings. Celebrated painters including Edgar Degas, Thomas Lawrence, and Giorgio Vasari were passionate collectors, and their appetites for drawings by old and contemporary masters compelled them to acquire exceptional examples of draftsmanship by artists such as Delacroix, Raphael, and Rembrandt. Not just a tool for the making of works of art, drawings were valued as intellectual property, coveted rarities, and powerful status symbols.

In Focus: Election Eve

June 16–November 8, 2020

Photographs play a powerful role in American politics. This exhibition features William Eggleston’s Election Eve, a two-volume photography book made as the country readied for the 1976 presidential race, alongside other photographs from past and present that prompt reflection on the democratic process. Images of politicians, protests, and patriotism offer a timely take on civic life and the public experience of anticipation just before an election.

The Getty Villa

Assyria: Palace Art of Ancient Iraq

October 2, 2019–September 5, 2022

Assyrian kings in the ninth to seventh centuries B.C. decorated their palaces with masterful relief sculptures that represent a high point of Mesopotamian art, both for their artistic quality and sophistication and for their vivid depictions of warfare, rituals, mythology, hunting, and other aspects of Assyrian court life. The importance of these ancient treasures has only increased with the recent destruction, by ISIS, of many of the reliefs that remained in Iraq.

The masterworks in this exhibition are on special loan from the British Museum, London.

Mesopotamia: Civilization Begins

March 18–July 27, 2020

Mesopotamia—the land "between the rivers” in modern-day Iraq—was home to the ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians. Among their many achievements are the creation of the earliest known script (cuneiform), the formation of the first cities, the development of advanced astronomical and mathematical knowledge, and spectacular artistic and literary accomplishments. The exhibition covers three millennia from the first cities in about 3200 B.C. to Alexander the Great’s conquest of Babylon in 331 B.C.